150-years-ago -- THE BATTLE OF FRANKLIN, Tennessee, Nov. 30, 1864

[Excerpted from Company Aytch, Maury Grays, First Tennesse Regiment, or A Sideshow of the Big, by Sam R. Watkins, Columbia, Tenn. 1900]  

FRANKLIN. 

"The death-angel gathers its last harvest. 

Kind reader, right here my pen, and courage, and ability 

fail me. I shrink from butchery. * Would to God I could tear 

the page from these memoirs and from my own memory. It 

is the blackest page in the history of the war of the Lost Cause. 

It was the bloodiest battle of modern times in any war. It was 

the finishing stroke to the independence of the Southern Con- 

federacy. I was there. I saw it. My flesh trembles, and 

creeps, and crawls when I think of it to-day. My heart almost 

ceases to beat at the horrid recollection. Would to God that I 

had never witnessed such a scene! 

I cannot describe it. It beggars description. I will not 

attempt to describe it. I could not. The death-angel was there 

to gather its last harvest. It was the grand coronation of death. 

Would that I could turn the page. But I feel, though I did so, 

that page would still be there, teeming with its scenes of horror 

and blood. I can only tell of what I saw. 

Our regiment was resting in the gap of a range of hills in 

plain view of the city of Franklin. We could see the battle- 

flags of the enemy waving in the breeze. Our army had been 

depleted of its strength by a forced march from Spring Hill, 

and stragglers lined the road. Our artillery had not yet come 

up, and could not be brought into action. Our cavalry was 

across Harpeth river, and our army was but in poor condition to 

make an assault. While resting on this hill-side, I saw a courier                          dash up to our commanding general, B. F. Cheatham, and 

the word, "Attention !" was given. I knew then that we would 

soon be in action. Forward, march. We passed over the hill 

and through a little skirt of woods. 

The enemy were fortified right across the Franklin pike, 

in the suburbs of the town. Right here in these woods a detail 

of skirmishers was called for. Our regiment was detailed. 

We deployed as skirmishers, firing as we advanced on the left of 

the turnpike road. If I had not been a skirmisher on that day, 

I would not have been writing this to-day, in the year of our 

Lord 1882. 

It was four o’clock on that dark and dismal December day 

when the line of battle was formed, and those devoted heroes 

were ordered forward, to "Strike for their altars and their fires, 

For the green graves of their sires, For God and their native land." 

As they marched on down through an open field toward the 

rampart of blood and death, the Federal batteries began to open 

and mow down and gather into the garner of death, as brave, 

and good, and pure spirits as the world ever saw. The twi- 

light of evening had begun to gather as a precursor of the coming 

blackness of midnight darkness that was to envelop a scene 

so sickening and horrible that it is impossible for me to describe 

it. "Forward, men, is repeated all along the line. A sheet of 

fire was poured into our very faces, and for a moment we halted 

as if in despair, as the terrible avalanche of shot and shell laid 

low those brave and gallant heroes, whose bleeding wounds at 

tested that the struggle would be desperate. Forward, men! 

The air loaded with death-dealing missiles. Never on this earth 

did men fight against such terrible odds. It seemed that the 

very elements of heaven and earth were in one mighty uproar. 

Forward, men ! And the blood spurts in a perfect jet from 

the dead and wounded. The earth is red with blood. It runs 

in streams, making little rivulets as it flows. Occasionally there 

was a little lull in the storm of battle, as the men were loading 

their guns, and for a few moments it seemed as if night tried to 

cover the scene with her mantle. The death-angel shrieks and 

laughs and old Father Time is busy with his sickle, as he gathers 

in the last harvest of death, crying, More, more, more! while his 

rapacious maw is glutted with the slain. 

But the skirmish line being deployed out, extending a little 

wider than the battle did passing through a thicket of small 

locusts, where Brown, orderly sergeant of Company B, was 

killed we advanced on toward the breastworks, on and on. I 

had made up my mind to die felt glorious. We pressed for- 

ward until I heard the terrific roar of battle open on our right. 

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne
(Library of Congress)

Cleburne's division was charging their works. I passed on until 

I got to their works, and got over on their (the Yankees) side. 

But in fifty yards of where I was, the scene was lit up by fires 

that seemed like hell itself. It appeared to be but one line of 

streaming fire. Our troops were upon one side of the breast 

works, and the Federals on the other. I ran up on the line of 

works, where our men were engaged. Dead soldiers filled the 

entrenchments. The firing was kept up until after midnight, 

and gradually died out. We passed the night where we were. 

But when the morrows sun began to light up the eastern sky 

to reveal its rosy hues, and we looked over the battlefield, O, my 

God! what did we see! It was a grand holocaust of death. 

Death had held high carnival there that night. The dead were 

piled the one on the other all over the ground. I never was so 

horrified and appalled in my life. Horses, like men, had died 

game on the gory breastworks. General Adams horse had his 

fore feet on one side of the works and his hind feet on the other, 

dead. The general seems to have been caught so that he was 

held to the horse’s back, sitting almost as if living, riddled, and 

mangled, and torn with balls. General Cleburne’s mare had her 

fore feet on top of the works, dead in that position. General 

Cleburne’s body was pierced with forty-nine bullets, through 

and through. General Strahl’s horse lay by the roadside and 

the general by his side, both dead, and all his staff. General 

Gist, a noble and brave cavalier from South Carolina, was lying 

with his sword reaching across the breastworks still grasped in 

his hand. He was lying there dead. All dead! They sleep 

in the graveyard yonder at Ashwood, almost in sight of my 

home, where I am writing to-day. They sleep the sleep of the 

brave. We love and cherish their memory. They sleep beneath 

the ivy-mantled walls of St. John’s church, where they 

expressed a wish to be buried. The private soldier sleeps where 

he fell, piled in one mighty heap. Four thousand five hundred 

privates! all lying side by side in death! Thirteen generals 

were killed and wounded. Four thousand five hundred men 

slain, all piled and heaped together at one place. I cannot tell 

the number of others killed and wounded. God alone knows 

that. We’ll all find out on the morning of the final resurrection.